


Of Iron and Marble

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21531454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: Prototype snippet for a potential long-form fic. The year is 146 BC, otherwise known to the Romans as 608 AVC. In the west, the ancient enemy of Carthage has finally been destroyed, her namesake city burned to the ground. In the east, the Achaean League has been dismantled, Corinth and Patras have been sacked, and Greece has come fully underneath the Roman yoke. Elsewhere, a flying man imbued with the color of gold descends unseen over the Atlantic Ocean, doomed to be alone with his thoughts for hundreds of years; following in his wake, though, were countless, alien objects that would merge with thousands of people around the world, and which would change the course of human history forever...
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Of Iron and Marble

Eunike supposed that, in a way, she should be grateful that her journey was almost at an end; the moment that one of the men in the crowd bought her, she would be hauled back off to their house or to their homestead, and she would finally have the chance to actually settle into her new life as a slave. She hoped that she would be purchased as a house slave, a house slave like how dear old Chyrse back in Corinth was for her own family; even if Eunike was purchased by a lecherous man who wanted to use her for more than just housekeeping duties, she supposed that it would be vastly preferable to being forced to work as a farm slave, or a brothel slave. A small, silent scoff escaped from between her lips at the thought, though, a sound quiet enough to not be heard by the nearby guards who were on the lookout for any signs of disobedience from their charges; strange, that she had reached a point in her life where she hoped that she would _only_ be a house slave, rather than a free woman.

Damn the elders of Corinth for that, though; damn them all to the darkest recesses of Tartarus for their pride and for their vanity. They didn't want to go down without a fight, they said? They didn't want to bend the knee to Roman tyranny without even the most futile of struggles? Damn them for that, because it wasn't as if they had asked Eunike, or Eunike's mother, or Eunike's younger sisters, or Eunike's sweet, precious Nilus, too young to have a voice at the assembly, but still forced onto the walls that he might die for his father and his grandfather's petty, trite egos; Eunike considered that, perhaps, being a man of Corinth and dying in battle against the Romans might have actually been a mercy compared to what had happened to the women and the children of the city after the legions stormed through the gates.

After the end of the siege, though, Eunike had been given nothing but time to come to terms with what had happened to her, and what her life had become; once the initial pillaging and looting had run its course, she was tied up in a line of other Corinthians and marched down to a series of slave ships, waiting to take them to various destinations and various markets where they would inevitably be sold off. The winds, apparently, weren't exactly the most favorable for the sailing, and the journey her ship had plotted to the city of Rome itself ended up taking several more weeks than had originally been anticipated; that was, of course, several more weeks for Eunike to stew down in the ship's hold, to learn how to breathe toxic, fetid, unventilated air, to learn how to eat nothing but tasteless, unfilling gruel, to learn how to wear clothes that rapidly began to fray and tear, to learn how to be and live as a _slave_.

Because that _was_ what she was at that point, wasn't she? If she needed any more confirmation of the fact that she was no longer a human being but instead nothing but chattel to be sold and bought, being placed up on an auction block for a crowd of men to stare and leer at would have made anyone admit their circumstances. Gods, but the fact that she didn't even _understand_ anything that anybody around her was saying, that she didn't even _understand_ what the pig-faced slave merchant was saying as he described her to the crowd just made it all even _worse_ ; a damned crying shame that the men of Corinth saw it more fit for their daughters to learn how to be wives and mothers rather than to learn things like, oh, being able to speak the language of the largest and most influential empire in Europe. Another quiet sigh, though, as she lamented things that could no longer have been fixed at that moment, likely could never have been fixed even if she had tried; she had been born into her circumstances, she supposed, and she had ended up as a victim of those circumstances, had always been carried along by someone else's decision, had always...

It wasn't as if Eunike hadn't considered escaping, of course; by Hades, she _had_ been trying to escape from Corinth when she and her sisters had been caught by the Romans. Once she had been tied up, though, she had always been under watch, always been in confined spaces, never given an opportunity to even _think_ of how she might escape; even there, in the slave market, there were guards stationed everywhere, barring every possible avenue of escape that Eunike or any of the other slaves might have tried to take. In particular, there was a large, powerful-looking man that she presumed to be some sort of captain for the guards; he stood a short distance away from where the slaves were gathered, and looked over the gaggle of bound and tied Greeks with a wary, cautious eye. Considering that all of the other Romans nearby viewed the slaves with nothing more than disdain, looked at them as if they were nothing more than vermin, it was quite odd that the man seemed to have viewed the Greeks as... A danger? Did he actually believe that any of them - or even _all_ of them - could possibly have posed a danger to well-equipped, well-trained troops like the ones under his command?

The guard captain was, of course, the odd man out; as much as he looked at Eunike and the other slaves with suspicion and paranoia, so did the merchant and potential buyers still only look at all of them as _merchandise_ , as _commodities_ for trade. The obese slave trader said something humorous in Latin, before he gave Eunike a smack on her bottom while laughed a wide, perverted grin that showed off a mouth missing most of its teeth; the Greek girl clenched her jaw and suppressed her disgust and rising bile, even as the chuckles of the nearby Roman men essentially translated what the ugly-faced merchant had said before. Eunike wasn't a beauty to make Aphrodite jealous, but she knew enough to know that brothel owners only needed girls that men were willing to pay for, and... Please, Hera, not a brothel slave, _anything_ but a brothel slave, she'd rather be a _mine_ slave than a brothel slave, please, Hera, mother of the gods, Eunike would devote her entire _life_ to you if it meant that she was saved from being a brothel slave, she would-

The man that walked up to where Eunike was standing on the auction block didn't look at her with lecherous eyes; the Greek teenager _wanted_ to feel relief at that fact, but the way that the rough, battle-scarred looking man examined her somehow managed to make her feel even _worse_. He grabbed her chin with calloused, hardened fingers, shifting Eunike's head that way and then the other, sharply enough to cause the girl no small amount of actual pain; some small part of Eunike felt that having the man look at her like he wanted to violate her would have been better than the way that he really did just look at her like a _thing_ , like he was examining a piece of furniture for defects or breaks before he decided to purchase his item. The slave trader looked somewhat annoyed as the potential buyer roughly handled Eunike that he might further examine her body, checking for any possible damage to the _object_ that he was closely considering. The fact that the man examined _all_ of her body confirmed Eunike's worst fears: In spite of his rather businesslike demeanor, the harsh-looking man was intending to buy her as a brothel slave.

Eunike's world began to grow dark as she saw the man that she presumed to be her new owner hand over several coins to the obese merchant, who smiled gleefully and viciously at the completed transaction. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears as adrenaline flooded through her veins, all while a volatile mixture of emotions rushed into her body. "No..." The word Eunike spoke was quiet, very nearly silent, as her head lowered, eyes staring at the ground. "No..." Was that really all that she was at that point? Was that really all that everybody thought of her as? Some _thing_ , some _piece of meat_ to be bought and sold like a head of cattle? "No... Hera..." Hera, please, does that young woman beseech you to grant her succor from the fate that inevitably awaits her. "No... Please..." Please, by the gods, why was that her fate? She was a human being! A living, breathing, human being, with thoughts, and feelings, and everything else that made up a human! "No... Why...?" Why was it her fate to be viewed as nothing but _chattel_? "No..." To be viewed as nothing but an _object_? "Hera..." To be viewed as nothing but _merchandise_. "Please..." To be viewed as nothing but a _commodity_? "No!" To be viewed as nothing but-!

She was on the ground. There was yelling, mostly in Latin, some in Greek. Had she passed out? Had she grown that stressed from what had been happening? A rough hand grabbed onto her arm and yanked her up; her new owner. She looked around, head still foggy, and saw the guard captain from before; he was on his knees, hand on his head, jaw clenched, looking around feverishly. His eyes settled on her, wide, with danger and tension. Wait, why was he looking at _her_ , what was-

Eunike's owner backed away from her, the rough man's face full of fear, an expression that didn't seem like it should have been on his battle-scared visage. He was afraid? What was he afraid of? He was afraid of her. Why was he afraid of her? What had-

And that was when Eunike saw them: Extending out of her body were several lines of rope, flopping around impotently. As if instinctively, Eunike "pushed" on one of the ropes, and found that she was able to move it around freely; it passed through people as if they were ghosts, but when it touched a solid, inanimate object... One of the ropes grabbed a large, broken chunk of marble off the ground, and coiled itself back into Eunike's flesh, bringing the stone with it. A second and another reflexive "push" later, and one of Eunike's fists had turned into a rough replica of that piece of marble, but marble that was a _part_ of her, was a _part_ of who Eunike was; without a second thought, Eunike threw a punch with her marble-hand, practically breaking the face of the man who had tried to purchase her.

Screams erupted as the unarmed Roman men scattered, and the bound Greeks backed away from Eunike; the Roman guards circled around her, shouting in Latin, one managing a few, scattered words in poorly-spoken Greek. "You! Bad! Stop! Kill!" What was happening? Eunike had barely any idea what was happening. She had been operating like an automaton for the past minute, with ropes flying out of her body and grabbing objects and turning her fist into stone, and... Eunike was confused, yes, that much was true. But one thing that the teenage Greek girl knew was that Hera _had_ answered her prayers, that the mother of the gods had given her power, and that she could _use_ that power to _escape_ from the life of slavery that she was otherwise fated to.

One of the slave guards - a more veteran one, by the looks of it - awkwardly carried a scutum; one of Eunike's ropes grabbed onto it, and practically tore it out of the man's hands, in spite of his angry protests. A second later, and Eunike's body had absorbed it; it was a rather peculiar feeling, but not one that the girl had the time to think about at that moment. One more second, and Eunike felt her body... Shift. Rather than be composed of meat and flesh, she felt it turn into layered wood, canvas, and leather, just like the Roman man's shield has been made from. An impotent attempt by a guard behind her to stab his gladius into Eunike's new shield-body was deflected without issue; turning her entire right arm to stone, the teenager then slammed her hand into her attacker's chest, throwing him backward onto the stone pavement.

"Stop!" A single word, spoken in an authoritative voice; Eunike turned to see the guard captain stepping through the ring of his subordinates, though still keeping a safe distance from the girl. "Do you know what you are, girl?" The Greek he spoke was fluent, only slightly accented; as he spoke, though, the gladius held somehow managed to ignite into flames, a fire that didn't seem to bother the man at all.

Did Eunike know what she was? The thought had crossed her mind when she initially awoke, and realized that she had suddenly been granted powers, though she hadn't had time to really think on it what with the initial chaos after her awakening; swallowing past a lump in her throat, though, Eunike nodded, and spoke slowly and carefully to the guard captain. "Godsborn. I... I am godsborn. And... And you?" Her words were stilted, her voice having barely been used in the months since Corinth, but Eunike hoped that she managed to speak with at least some confidence.

The man nodded back to Eunike, as flames slowly wrapped around the parma he held. "Yes, girl. I am godsborn as well." As quickly as it had ignited, the fires on the man's equipment extinguished, and he sheathed the gladius he had been holding. "Do me a favor, girl. Turn off your power, so that we can speak like civilized people." The guards around him looked at their captain in confusion - likely because none of them could follow the conversation - but none of them moved to make any attacks toward Eunike, either. The girl didn't exactly feel _safe_ turning herself back to flesh and blood, but part of her knew that the marble and the shield were still in her, ready to be called upon at a moment's notice if necessary; with a slow, careful nod, then, Eunike did as the man asked, her body returning to its natural form.

The guard captain crossed his arms as he looked Eunike up and down; he wasn't quite looking at her as an _object_ , per se, but the expression that he had as he examined Eunike was more like the one that a man would wear while examining a _weapon_. "Senate sends godsborn like me down to slave markets like this as watchmen." The captain's eyes darted up to meet Eunike's, sharp coldness in his expression. "Know why they do that, girl?" As intimidated as she was by the man, Eunike had to take several seconds before she could respond with a delayed, nervous shake of her head. "Because we know that, for whatever damned reason, slaves have an unnatural propensity to become godsborn." Eunike looked back to where the other Greeks were huddled, watching both her and the captain with equal amounts of fear; to say that Eunike felt hurt at her countrymen viewing her with that degree of terror would have been an understatement, and a momentary desire to lash out of them rose up before the Roman man continued. "Thing is, godsborn don't make good slaves, do they?"

Eunike whipped her head back around to the captain, feeling her hands already turning back to marble at his words. "And... And what does that mean, good sir?" Between what had happened at Corinth, what had happened in the months following her capture, and the sheer _power_ she felt she had literally within her hands at that moment, Eunike was finding it _very_ hard to carry on a polite conversation with a man that was, for all intents and purposes, an accessory to her would-be enslavement. "Am I... Am I faulty merchandise, then?" Eunike felt her shield-skin return as her eyes narrowed. "Will you have to... _Dispose_ of me, because I'm now _broken_?"

"Girl. Stop." The captain still stood there with his arms crossed, neither of his hands having gone for his gladius. "No, you're not being 'disposed' of, and you're not 'faulty' merchandise. If anything, you're _more_ valuable to the Republic now than you were before." Oh, she was _more_ valuable? How rich! Turned into a godsborn and still being thought of in terms of _value_ ; rather than turn off her transformation, Eunike opted to just stare hard back at the captain. "By the damned below, girl." The man paced slowly back and forth, one of his hands going up to rub the back of his closely-shaved head. "Listen. Let me start from the beginning. You're a godsborn now, right?" Eunike nodded, feeling some bits of marble crumble off from her hands as she clenched them tightly. "Because of how powerful they are, godsborn can't be slaves. Godsborn _aren't_ slaves. In fact, the Senate has decreed that all godsborn are _automatically_ granted full Roman citizenship. I'm guessing you hadn't heard that bit, yet?"

Eunike's face contorted in confusion as she processed the man's words. Godsborn were automatically granted full Roman citizenship? Did that mean that she...? "Wait. No." The girl shook her head in frustration, before pointing a marble-constructed finger at the captain. "Why would I want to be a Roman citizen?! You burned my city to the ground! You turned me into a slave! Your... Your soldiers, to me... To my sisters... Why in the name of Zeus would I _ever_ want to be a Roman?!" The volume and fervor with which Eunike had been shouting had caused the nearby guards to close their circle around her again, pointing gladii and hastae toward the girl. "You're _fucking_ savages! You're _dogs_! Become a Roman?! Don't make me laugh!"

In spite of having had his Republic's name dragged through the dirt a second ago, the captain's voice was calm and placid, albeit somewhat condescending. "Girl. I'm sorry about what happened to your city and to your family. But that's the way the world works, and you _know_ that. You Greeks have done the same things to other people that we Romans have done to you. Woe to the vanquished, after all." Eunike clenched her jaw, tight enough that she felt the wood her teeth was composed of at that moment start to strain; he wasn't wrong, as much as she wanted him to be, and she _did_ know that Greeks were just as guilty of those crimes as Romans were - her own Chyrse back in Corinth was evidence of that enough - but... By Hera! Taking young girls from their homes and forcing them into work at brothels?! Greek or Roman or Carthaginian, there was no righteousness in that!

"What's your point?" Eunike turned one of her feet into marble, and stamped it into the ground, prompting a few of the nearby guards to tense up in response before their captain waved them down. "You still haven't told me why I would want to stay here in Rome. Why don't I just leave, go back home to Corinth, try and pick up the pieces back there, or somewhere else in Greece? You still haven't told me why I should want to renounce who I am and become a Roman. Olympus on high, I don't even _speak_ Latin!"

"Don't worry, girl; that can be rectified." The man took a cautious, testing step toward Eunike; when the girl didn't make any aggressive motion toward him, he maintained that same distance. "The Senate offers tutors to new godsborn in Rome's service, to teach them Latin, the laws of the Republic, and so forth. Give it a year, and you'll feel just at home in Rome as you did in Corinth."

Eunike _would_ have torn the man apart for suggesting that she could love Rome as much as she loved Corinth, but there was something else that he had said that had caught the girl's attention more. "...in Rome's service?" Eunike shook her head slightly, a questioning look on her face. "What do you mean, in Rome's service? I thought you said that I would just be a Roman citizen? What's this about 'service'?"

The captain did his best to keep the patronizing look off of his face, but much of his derision still came through even so. "Girl, there's no such thing in this world as a free meal, you know. Citizens _everywhere_ are expected to offer up service to their city; Corinth was no exception, and neither is Rome." Another careful step toward Eunike, and another one that she didn't retaliate against him for. "You'll be compensated, though. Given stipend, land, slaves of your own..." He motioned toward the other Greeks nearby, and Eunike felt a momentary stab of self-loathing when the idea _appealed_ to her for a moment, Hera curse her for it. "More than you could have ever _dreamed_ of back in Corinth, girl. You'll be sent off with the legions, yes, or onto other some other senatorial tasks, but whenever you come back to Rome, you'll be _celebrated_ as a champion of the Republic. Same as me, girl. Same as all other of Rome's godsborn."

The man sounded... Genuine. As much as Eunike wanted to hate him, wanted to hate Rome, wanted to hate _Romans_ , and wanted to hate their vile, disgusting Senate and Republic, the captain... He wasn't lying, was he? Eunike felt her power slowly turning itself off as she stood there, silently, her mind and her heart racing in equal measure. Corinth was gone, wasn't it? Her family dead or missing. There was nothing left for her there, even if she wanted there to be. What else could she have managed to do with her life? Sure, she was a godsborn at that point, but what opportunities did that otherwise really open up to her? Was she supposed to turn to banditry, using her power to assault travelers and steal their goods? She _wanted_ to hate Rome, but was there really any choice left for her? Eunike had promised her life in service to Hera if the mother of the gods saved her, and Hera _had_ indeed given Eunike a much needed blessing at such a crucial point, but... Maybe it was fine? Maybe Hera would forgive Eunike if the girl simply went with the Romans? Maybe Eunike would manage to avoid being cursed by the gods? After all, it wasn't as if there was any other-

Several loud, likely profane Latin words were shouted from nearby; the next second, Eunike watched a person - presumably a man, judging by the sound of his voice - charge in through the crowd of guards, scattering them to and fro. The man wore a set of chainmail armor that somehow encompassed almost his entire form and which glittered brilliantly in the sunlight; in one hand, he wielded an equally luminous longsword, while his other hand held a long shield whose design Eunike was uncertain of - perhaps the Gauls she had heard so much about? With a curse in Latin, the guard captain ignited not only his gladius and his parma, but also his entire body, turning into a human inferno as he threw himself at the newly arrived warrior; while the Roman soldiers gathered as close to their commander as they could without fear of being scorched by the man's flames, the enslaved Greeks - as well as most of the nearby Roman civilians who had otherwise been engaged in their own business - opted to take the opportunity to run before they were ended up as any sort of collateral damage, opting to deal with the consequences of their escape later rather than risk being turned into cinders.

Eunike, for her part, simply stood there and watched as the Roman captain and the presumably Gallic warrior squared off, fire and metal clashing right there in the streets of mid-afternoon Rome; it wasn't as if the poor girl had any idea what else to do, after all given that the situation had turned from confusing and troubling to utterly confounding in the space of only several seconds, and that she had little to no idea as to who the newcomer even _was_. As Eunike stood there dumbfounded, yet _another_ addition to her questions appeared; what first seemed to be a running stream of water coming from down the stone-paved city road came to a stop next to her, the liquid pooling together for a moment before a young man's head appeared out of the puddle. Looking at Eunike intently, he asked her a question in a language that she didn't recognize; not knowing how else to respond, the Greek girl simply shook her head down at the water-man, who shrugged himself in return and rushed off toward the guards in a stream of liquid.

"He asked you if you were Iberian. Though I have no idea why he would think that." As the person behind her spoke up in nearly unaccented Greek, Eunike nearly jumped out of her skin in fright; defensively bringing up a pair of marble-composite fists, the Greek girl turned around to see a vaguely dark-skinned woman with long, curly black hair standing a few feet away, her eyes locked on the battle in front of her. "I'm no danger to you, girl. Nor are my compatriots." Eunike looked back toward the fight, where the water-man began sending himself into the noses and mouths of the unpowered Roman soldiers while avoiding the heat from the guard captain's flames. "At the very least, I'd like to believe that we're more amenable folks than Publius and his thugs." Publius? Eunike supposed that must have been the name of the guard captain that she had been talking to before the other godsborn arrived. "My name is Adonya. May I ask yours, young Greek?"

Adonya? A Carthaginian name, if Eunike remembered. Keeping one eye on the fight and one eye on the newly come woman, Eunike swallowed and offered her response. "My name is Eunike, daughter of Temenos, from Corinth. What, uhm..." Eunike felt her ropes come out almost unbidden, the hempen tendrils instinctively seeking out objects for her new, morphable body to use if the battle spilled over to where she and Adonya were standing. "I'm sorry, Miss Adonya, but I am _very_ confused, as I hope you can understand. What... What is going on here, exactly? Who are you people?"

The Carthaginian woman stared at the fight with intense, sharp eyes for several seconds, before speaking curtly over to the teenager. "Pardon me for one moment, Eunike." Pulling out a xiphos, Adonya took several long, rapid strides over to where her comrades were engaged, and began striking at the unpowered guards with it. While the woman was causing her targets to crumple to the ground with an ease unlike anything Eunike had ever seen from a soldier, Eunike did not see a single drop of blood spilt; was Adonya using a blunted blade? Turning her eyes to the soldiers that the Iberian water-man had "drowned", Eunike could still see the tell-tale signs of their breathing, indicating that they had merely been knocked unconscious rather than suffocated unto death; they weren't killing the Romans? They were _intentionally_ only incapacitating them? By the name of Hera was Eunike's head being overwhelmed by the confusion that she felt.

Once the unpowered Romans had all been knocked out, the Iberian man flowed back over to where Eunike was standing, manifesting in a burst of water next to her; she couldn't blame the man for not wanting to join her comrades in fighting Publius, given the nature of the Roman man's powers and the fact that the Iberian turned himself into liquid. In broken, unsteady Greek, he offered: "Hello. Vecatus. You?" His smile was guileless, perhaps even almost stupid, but Eunike couldn't hate it, either.

"I'm Eunike. Nice to meet you, Vecatus." The girl spoke slowly, giving Vecatus time to parse her words through whatever limited understanding of her language that he had; more than the water-man, though, Eunike was more interested in the way that Adonya and the Gallic warrior teamed up against Publius. While the Gaul's armor apparently insulated him against the heat emanating from Publius' flame body, it was clear that Adonya was stepping in only to deliver a short blow, before retreating to a safe distance away from the scorching fires coating the Roman man's form. As skilled of a warrior as Publius obviously was, though - and as much combat ability as his power granted him - it was clear that he wasn't able to handle two other godsborn in close combat, and a blow from the Gaul's sword to the back of the Roman man's head sent him crumpling onto the stone pavement of the street and extinguishing his fires.

Before Eunike could properly appreciate the other godsborn fighting prowess, though, Adonya was already on her, grabbing the Greek girl's hand and pulling her down along the abandoned Roman street. "No time to gawk, Eunike. We need to leave before any other Roman dogs show up." Vecatus and the armored Gaul seemed to have been of a similar mind as Adonya, as they fell in step to either side of the woman who Eunike assumed must have been some kind of leader for them. "Battles between godsborn tend to attract attention, to say the least, and it would be best if none of us were here when that attention arrives in the form of empowered Senatorial goons.

"Wait, Miss Adonya..." It was all that Eunike could do to keep up to the Carthaginian woman, considering Adonya's pace and the fact that Eunike had been sent to the slavemarket without any sandals or footwear to speak of; turning the soles of her feet into marble to prevent any further pain from walking on the stone pavement, Eunike desperately attempted to voice her bewilderment to the other godsborn. "Miss Adonya, I don't mind following you, but can you please, _please_ tell me who you are, and what's going on here?!" The Greek girl's face contorted in frustration and annoyance even as her voice picked up in volume; despite everything, though, she managed to stay right in step behind Adonya and the two men. "I'm about to be sold as a slave, then I turn into a godsborn, then that man Publius offers me service with Rome, and then _you three_ show up out of nowhere and defeat Publius and all of his guards, and now you're dragging me away somewhere?! I truly, _truly_ hope that you can understand how _confused_ I am, Miss Adonya!" Her mother had always taught her to be polite, no matter how angry she was, but Eunike's patience for politeness had begun to run very, _very_ thin by that point.

With a sigh, Adonya stopped in her tracks - causing Eunike to nearly collide with her - before turning on her heels to look squarely at the Greek girl; crossing her arms, the Carthaginian woman spoke with a curt, slightly harsh tone. "Very well. I'll give you the short of it, but then we _keep going_ before the Romans arrive. Yes?" Eunike nodded immediately, still composed enough to realize the urgency of the situation in spite of her consternation; returning the girl's nod, Adonya continued, her voice quick and sharp. "We are the Children of Mercury." Vecatus and the Gaul took up position to either side of Adonya, the Iberian man smiling wide and confidently. "Our goals are freedom for all enslaved peoples, and the destruction of Rome." With a slightly sardonic grin - the first thing resembling a smile that Eunike had seen on Adonya's face - the Carthaginian woman extended a hand toward the girl. "We were hoping that you might be interested in joining us, dear Eunike."

Eunike stared at Adonya's outstretched hand, before turning to look at where Publius and her men were laying on the ground, in various states of unconsciousness; turning back to where the three other godsborn were standing, the Greek girl took as many seconds as she felt safe to simply stare at them and let her mind attempt to process everything she had just heard. The Children of Mercury? Freedom for all enslaved peoples? The destruction of Rome? All of that on top of what Publius had told and offered her was making the poor Eunike's head churn like one of Poseidon's storms, with no land in sight for the pitiful young girl. The only thing that she could possibly think at that moment was that Hera herself only knew exactly what Eunike's miserable, wretched life had managed to become.

Not knowing what else to do, she took Adonya's hand, and rushed onward.


End file.
